Good evening and welcome back to the postseason. I'm getting fired up as per tradition with Enter Sandman. After a long slog through the regular season the Pens have finally reached a point to where the games and results matter. The Pens had their 2nd best regular season in history this year and seemingly impressed nobody. The Pens battled injury and boredom most of the year, yet both of those issues should be gone. With Letang and Martin back and Malkin practicing today it looks like we can finally say the battle station is fully armed and operational. Even beyond that, Crosby has said this is the best he has felt in years. That should make people 3% less pessimistic. Let's hope Fleury can wait until the 2nd shot he faces to give up a goal tonight. At this point the past failures of this team are known and have been hashed, rehashed, and hashed some more. The road to redemption starts tonight. The talent is there to win another Cup. They just need to keep their heads and possibly frame Adams and Scuderi for a homicide so they'll be taken out of the lineup. This team has battled injuries and adversity all season. We know they can do it and there's no reason for them to go mental once the calendar hits April.

The opponent this series is the Columbus Blue Jackets, who managed to make the playoffs for the 2nd time in their franchise's history. #Lumbus fans have been unusually mouthy for a team that's never won a single postseason game in its history and has been smacked around recently by the Pens. They risk crossing the line from cute, plucky opponent to annoying fanbase desperate for a rivalry that doesn't exist. That's not a line you ever want to cross. Due to scheduling quirks their star goalie Bobrovsky only played 23 minutes in the 5 Pens/CBJ games. Despite their history this is a dangerous team in the postseason. They have no pressure on them and are playing with house money at this point. That's a scary thing.

With the next game not until Saturday there's going to be a lot of hyper-analysis after tonight no matter what the result. Whaddya say we go out and beat these guys like a drum as to not have to deal with "ANOTHER PENS CHOKE" articles on the internet and here. As a fellow midget once said, those are brave men knocking at our door. Let's go kill them.